srwal Posted March 30, 2006 Share Posted March 30, 2006 I have to deploy 70 machines on a domain, and i found that fastest way was to do it by cloning. However, taking out a hard drive and putting it in the machine to be clone and doing disk to disk imaging is considerably faster than setting it up from scratch but still a bit time comsuming. A friend told me that i should build a GhostCast Server along with a network boot (he said diskette is ok, but i should use PXE boot or that's what i think its called), but i have NO idea of how to do it. The way he is thinking is that i shouldn't even have to use a diskette. Can anyone here point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garethevans1986 Posted March 30, 2006 Share Posted March 30, 2006 Cant you just make a DVD Image and use that same image DVD or something? ChocIST Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srwal Posted March 30, 2006 Author Share Posted March 30, 2006 The computers dont have DVD drives, but i still your have to put the DVD or DVDs in the machines.... if i do it via the network, would'nt it be faster? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieterich Posted March 30, 2006 Share Posted March 30, 2006 Yep. GhostCast is sweet. Although, I really wouldn't try to image all 70 machines at once. That's a ton of data being transmitted across the network. If you have all the exact same hardware, it's easy. You create a boot disk with network support, run the disk, connect them to your Ghost server and then send the image across. The absolute hardest part will be creating the boot disk. You'll need to find DOS compatible network card drivers for the boot disk to work. To create the boot disks(it usually takes 2 floppies), run the Ghost Boot Wizard and follow the instructions for a Network Boot Disk. As I said before, having the same exact hardware is nice as you'll only have to find one network driver. If you have differing network cards, you'll have to find drivers that work for each type, which means you'll need different sets of boot disks for different computers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srwal Posted March 30, 2006 Author Share Posted March 30, 2006 @dieterich thanks a mil..... but i wanted to use the network boot feature that the comes with the computer.... I fear the next set of computers being ordered may not have a diskette drive, so you see my problem... I'll try your suggestion, but i want to be proactive just incase the newer machines don't have diskette drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheReaperMan Posted March 30, 2006 Share Posted March 30, 2006 in the ghost casr server there a option to install the client on the machines on the network, if you connect a floppy less machine to the network you can install the ghost clinet and run everything from there, no need for floppy drives :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premgenius Posted March 30, 2006 Share Posted March 30, 2006 I use GhostCast server and every Christmas 850machines get wiped and done, and since we replaced all the machines with new PC no floppies I use a CD which is a pain beta testing anyways I've been looking at other options but nothing seems to be better well there one but it i'll leave it for the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieterich Posted March 30, 2006 Share Posted March 30, 2006 Oh, I see. Yeah, a PXE is the way you'll want to go. Not having any experience with that though, I can't be of much help. I do know that your PCs will need to be able to boot from a LAN device. It's going to be written into the BIOS I think. If you don't have that option on the machines, I don't think you'll be able to network boot them. But again, I'm not experienced with PXE.... :huh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srwal Posted March 30, 2006 Author Share Posted March 30, 2006 ok..cool..well i'll play about with it... expermentation is part of the learnign process Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
srwal Posted March 30, 2006 Author Share Posted March 30, 2006 Anyone know of any good PXE boot servers?.... i making some progress it seems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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